(from usconcealedcarry.com) I drove down to the 5th annual United States Concealed Carry Expo which took place over the past weekend (May 17-19) in Pittsburgh. We routinely attend and speak at the Gun Rights Policy Conference each September, someone gets to the NRA Annual Meeting in April, and we’ve seen a member visit and review the National Shooting Sports Federation’s SHOT Show the past two Januaries in Las Vegas. This was only the second DRGO visit to this relatively new event (Dr. E...

(linaahwmedia.blogspot.com) [Ed: The conclusion of the piece begun on Tuesday.] What lessons emerge from the pattern of such incidents, of which we’ve mentioned but four in vignette only?   First, is that if one party means to impose its will upon members of another party the former must effectively disarm the latter.  Such has been done successfully in diverse cultures throughout the world.  Overall, the results have too often been tragic.  American gun owners have learned the lesson...

(from dailyherald.com) [Ed: This is a piece rich in ideas and connections. It concludes on Thursday.] Frederick Douglass was loaned out for a year to Edward Covey in 1833 “to be broken”.  Prudent common-sense measures kept Blacks (slave and free) unarmed, or lightly armed at best.  “If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr. Covey. . . I was somewhat unma...

(from crooked.com) Of course, this thought experiment presumes some definition of “common-sense gun laws”.  The phrase has no generally accepted meaning.  Pacifists might imagine an army with no guns.  Black Lives Matter might imagine an unarmed police force.  American gun controllers imagine an American army and police force with guns, but keeping guns out of the hands of nearly all ordinary people. To make this exercise meaningful to an American audience, let’s adopt the last of these ...

(from news.vanderbilt.edu) Ed: This discussion is not a policy proposal by DRGO, but does illustrate the kind of creative thinking sorely lacking in our "national conversation about guns".] In a recent blog post a couple of shooters wondered if they could pass the Texas live-fire qualification—blindfolded.  They succeeded with respectable, though not spectacular, scores.   (more…)

(from emagui.eu) [Ed: Mission creep has been defined as "taking a group away from its original goals and objectives through expansion."] As has become the norm, I got an email recently from the American Academy of Pediatrics making a “statement” about the California synagogue shooting. That letter from the AAP President can be found here. (more…)

(from armsvault.com) That was the week that was. Even in its ordinary aspects it was another terrific experience: 15 acres of booths, displays, demonstrations, freebies, giveaways, and meeting and greeting many old friends and making many new ones. Scores of thousands of people all united by one important thing—devotion to the sustenance and expansion of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. (more…)

(from amazon.com) [Ed: Mr. Harsanyi’s day job is as Senior Editor of The Federalist, and he writes regularly for National Review. So we know his head is screwed on right, pun intended.] David Harsanyi published this book last fall. No reviewer could better describe it than its own subtitle: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History with the Gun. It’s thorough, and keeps you reading at a gallop. If you are interested in anything firearm-related during our past 500 years, it’s here. And...